I am about to be married, and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness. . .the efforts I am making with lawyers, etc., etc., to join my future connections, are, for a personage of my single and inveterate habits, to say nothing of indolence, quite prodigious! (Lord Byron

I believe Lord Byron may have been a time traveler, or may have, possibly, been given the briefest glimpse of prophecy, when he wrote these words. I say this because, upon reading this quote, I knew with 100% certainty that Lord Byron had written these words about me.

Planning a wedding is hard: Musicians, florists, pastors, churches, reception halls, chefs, invitation designers, invitation stuffers, invitation signers, DJs, photographers, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers etc., etc., for what feels like forever. This is to say nothing of the phone plans, bank merges, housing arrangements, insurance changes, and everything else involved with actually being married that all need to be done now, now, now.

I say again, planning a wedding is hard, and I haven’t made it any easier. Of this, I am sure.

Like Byron, (and many young men, I believe) I am inveterate in my habits, and at times, my indolence knows no bounds. I am lazy and I am stubborn, and I am not well acclimated to high-intensity planning in the same way my wife-to-be is. For this reason, for much of our wedding-planning experience, I played the man card:

“Oh I don’t care, honey, just do whatever you think is best.”

When this statement reflects the truth, it is normally a very effective strategy. I, unfortunately, can also count “opinionated” amongst my strongest qualities.

These qualities in me made much of the planning for our wedding a stressful chore, with me the constant naysayer:

“Oh we don’t need to get a second envelope for the invitations, that’s ridiculous.”

“Why would we want up-lighting in the reception space? That’s pointless.”

I won’t take 100% of the blame for this: wedding planning is stressful on its own and not nearly as fun as the Say Yes to the Dress cast and crew would have you believe, but I certainly wasn’t helping to make the situation any more enjoyable.

Whenever it was on my mind, I would pray “God, please help us through the difficulty of planning this wedding, so we can get on to marriage, something that actually matters. . .” choosing to consider the wedding itself to be no more than party of little consequence. Caring more about the marriage than the wedding gave me the philosophical high ground from which to launch my anti-pomp-and-circumstance campaigns.

My behavior came to a head a few weeks ago, when I finally began to realize that marriage, at its core, is about caring for another person in the same way, or more than, you care for yourself.

Paul writes in his letter to the Ephesians:

²⁵Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church - ³⁰ for we are members of his body.

On a whim, as I sat at my computer this morning trying to think of what to write this piece about, I Googled “Wedding Sermons.”

I came upon a video of a Pastor Jimmy Evans from August 18^th, 2012 entitled The Four Foundational Laws of Marriage.

Pastor Jimmy begins his sermon with a cautionary tale of his own marital experience. When he was first married, Jimmy, a lawyer at the time and a self-proclaimed “chauvinist pig,” would use his court room abilities to take control of disagreements, ensuring that responsibility for every mishap lay solely on his wife’s shoulders.

One night, as they were on the precipice of divorce and realizing something was fundamentally wrong with their relationship, Pastor Jimmy prayed:

“Holy Spirit, teach me to be a husband.”

Immediately afterward, he describes realizing how at fault he truly had been throughout their relationship, and how he was able to begin putting his marriage, and his wife above himself for the first time.

While I believe that Joanna and I have a much happier, healthier relationship than Pastor Jimmy did, this still resonated with me. I am engaged to be married. There is no “me,” no “I,” only “we,” and “us,” and this is something all foolish, selfish, immature young men like myself need to realize and remember every day of their lives.

Holy Spirit,
Teach me to be a husband.
 
Teach me to put my wants to the side, and instead care for my wife as I would care for myself. Teach me to love my wife in the same way Christ loves the Church, and to hold no other above her except Christ himself.
 
Help me to be the husband my wife so deserves.
 
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Contributed by Michael
Monday September 15, 2014
Liturgical Year A: Week 42
Liturgical Color: Green
Sunday Gospel reading: Proper 19
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost